When he was asked about their relationship many years later, Gibbs’s reply had a ring of impatience, as if the answer should be obvious: “My wife is beautiful, intelligent, and considerate. We get along fine. She goes her way and I go mine, so we don’t see much of each other—maybe that’s why.”9
Vera did have some influence on her husband’s wardrobe. After the marriage, Gibbs swapped his derby hat for a floppy brown fedora, his black bow tie for a batwing of the same color, while giving up his stiff wing collar entirely. For her part, Vera knew she had married a man who lived to work and was set in his ways, and she appreciated him for the driven eccentric he was. “He keeps himself like a trainer would a race horse,” she said. “He’s up regularly at six thirty… he fixes his own breakfast of weak tea with lots of sugar and Uneeda biscuits. He really only eats one meal a day—dinner.”10
As an independent woman for her era, Vera had no need to live for her husband. Publicly, at least, she described the marriage as a happy one. With William Francis putting in long hours at work, Vera filled her time with cultural and musical activities, sponsoring concerts and holding dinner parties at their apartment at 170 East Seventy-Ninth Street. She actively promoted the careers of African-American artists, at a time of continuing barriers to their rise. She hosted a dinner to honor soprano Dorothy Maynor after her recital at Town Hall; on the guest list were Harlem Renaissance photographer Carl Van Vechten and other notables.11
For Gibbs, work always trumped socializing. But he showed a commitment to Vera by adopting her son, Adrian, and on March 24, 1928, Vera gave birth to a son of their own. Vera thought of naming him William Francis Gibbs Jr., but changed her mind. “I thought the die had been broken with the creation of his father,” she said.12 So he received names from both his father and his Cravath grandfather: Francis Cravath Gibbs. Another son, Christopher, followed on September 2, 1930.
Gibbs was not a good family man. While he bent over his drafting board, his two sons spent much of their time at Grandpa Cravath’s Still Place in Locust Valley. Like their mother, both Francis and Christopher liked to ride horses through the fields of the estate. The two boys once sent Christmas cards to their father with each on their horses. The photo of young Francis showed that he had his father’s long jaw, spindly legs, and high cheekbones.13 The boys had a privileged childhood, but horses and possessions could never make up for the lack of time with their father. One family member would later describe the Gibbses’ parenting style as “rather arms-length”; Vera was “a socialite who lunched with Mrs. Belmont after Metropolitan Opera Guild meetings” and William Francis was “in Manhattan most of the time making sure things were in perfect running order” at the office.14
If life in the Gibbs family was less than ideal, father, mother, and grandpa Cravath at least shared a love of music. Cravath was also a cofounder of the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that promoted Wilsonian internationalism, a connection that could only have helped Gibbs’s career. And the exacting Cravath had indeed become fond of his daughter’s new husband. He was also apparently fond of ships as welclass="underline" whenever a liner would pass by his office and blow its whistle, New York’s greatest attorney was known to throw open his window and bellow back in response.15 Despite his intense interest in New York society, Cravath was himself a self-made man from a small town, and recognized talent when he saw it. His law firm, unlike other white-shoe establishments, made its hires based primarily on grades and natural talent, not family background, and gave young associates small parts of complex legal cases to master.16 This was an approach his lawyer-turned-engineer son-in-law would follow in his own career.
Frederic Gibbs lived alone after his older brother’s marriage, but didn’t seem to feel left out of the family. In fact, the Gibbs brothers continued to spend most of every day together, sharing a desk as Frederic struggled to balance the books of Gibbs Brothers Inc. Vera also spent time fussing over Frederic, calling her solitary brother-in-law “Fritzy Boy.”17
Vera’s money made little difference to Gibbs’s relentless self-marketing, as he was still doing his best to try to drum up business. After the loss of the Leviathan management contract, Gibbs Brothers kept itself afloat with minor commissions. Two years after refurbishing and operating the big ship, however, Gibbs finally received a commission to build a liner of his own from the keel up. If completed as specified, the Matson Line’s Malolo (Hawaiian for flying fish) would be the largest ship yet built in the United States. She would also be constructed in Gibbs’s hometown by the firm of William Cramp & Sons, the same shipyard where eight-year-old William Francis saw the launching of the St. Louis back in 1894. Carrying 693 first-class passengers, Malolo would serve on the Pacific run between San Francisco, Hawaii, and East Asia.
“She will be the finest liner of her type ever built,” Gibbs asserted. “It is our intention to incorporate every modern idea that will pass the stern scrutiny of practicability.”18
As it turned out, the ship nearly cost the Gibbs brothers their lives.
10. MALOLO
The years after the stunning debut of Leviathan were a dismal time for new ship construction in America. The big ship, popular with passengers despite her dry bars, continued to lose money, and her smaller running mates George Washington and America could hardly compete with the glamorous Cunard, White Star, and French fleets. The government-backed United States Lines was floundering. Even worse, Philip Franklin, now a bitter enemy, had shuttered the American Lines’ transatlantic service and made plans to sell White Star back to British interests. Gibbs of course was too proud to ask Franklin to take him back.
The man who had rebuilt America’s greatest ship found himself fighting over contracts for coastal vessels and tugboats with more established rivals such as Theodore Ferris. Ferris, a talented engineer, was also an astute businessman who carefully cultivated cozy relationships with shipyards. He also had few qualms about self-promotion. His peers described him as a “naval architect of ability and reputation,” and someone who “had enjoyed a highly lucrative practice for years.”1 Ferris and other more established naval architects locked up contracts with the Ward Line and the IMM-controlled Panama Pacific Line, which made freight and mail runs to South America and the Caribbean.
So getting the Malolo contract was a major coup, but it was the intervention of Gibbs’s old mentor that really kept the company afloat. Admiral David Taylor, who had backed William Francis Gibbs’s first superliner in 1914, also found himself looking for work. After retiring as chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Construction in 1923, he was serving as the president of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, a post that was prestigious but did not provide much satisfaction. He knew as well as any man that it was not a good era for shipbuilding. The Washington Naval Conference, convened in 1921 to end the race in naval armament, resulted in Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States agreeing to scrap most of their older battleships and limit the size and construction of new naval vessels.
But Admiral Taylor could not stay away from the designing of ships; nor did he want to be stuck in a do-nothing job after seeing so much of his previous work undone by the Washington treaty, one that the admiral knew would do little to stop Japan from becoming East Asia’s dominant naval power.